Location: room 7000, SFU Harbour Centre. Both the building and room are wheelchair accessible.

Co-sponsored by SFU's J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities, Vancity Community Foundation, Scotiabank Charity Challenge Run & 5K, Remember Our Sisters Everywhere, and the Women Refugees Advocacy Project.

REV. EL SHAFIE, HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATE, TO SPEAK ON THE PERSECUTION FACED BY YAZIDI WOMEN AND GIRLS

Majed El Shafie, who advocates on behalf of anyone who suffers religious persecution, will speak of his work rescuing Yazidi women and girls from ISIS and supporting them in Canada. The Yazidis are a religious minority who are historically located at the base of Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq.

The target of a genocidal campaign by ISIS, their Mount Sinjar community was almost entirely wiped out within a matter of hours in 2014. As part of this genocidal campaign the men were murdered and the women and girls were systematically enslaved, and sold many times over. Since the massacre, One Free World International has been engaged in the controversial work of helping Yazidi families get back their daughters, sisters, and wives.

In response to the genocide, Minister of Immigration and Refugees, promised to bring some of the Yazidi survivors to Canada as refugees and provide them with trauma care. Fast forward to March 2018, and the public learns that the promise of trauma care has not been kept. “Where is the Canadian government?” a Yazidi refugee, survivor of ISIS enslavement asks a New York Times reporter. The woman has been living in a Toronto basement apartment with her young son, reliving the torture she experienced during her captivity. “They told us they would help us with psychologist” she says. “We haven’t seen anything from them. Aren’t we human?”

In order to insist the government fulfill this crucially important promise of providing an expert-designed, culturally sensitive, therapeutic program, the Women Refugees Advocacy Project is building a coalition of groups to take our petition to parliament in Ottawa this Fall.

Barbarity triumphs when we abandon its victims.

A short documentary about an 11-year-old-girl’s escape from ISIS will be screened.

Click here to see the petition: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Prime_Minister_Justin_Trudeau_Minister_Hussen_Members_of_Parliament_The_Canadian_government_must_keep_its_promise_to_fem/

SPEAKER

Rev. Majed El Shafie is a human rights advocate and founder of One Free World International, a leading organization advocating for religious minorities globally. His human rights journey began in Egypt. He was forced to escape Egypt after he was tortured and sentenced to death for converting from Muslim to Christianity and for bringing awareness to human rights violations related to religious persecution.

As a survivor, and as one who confronts governments violating the essential human right to choose one’s religion, and from his experience conducting humanitarian rescue operations, El Shafie has obtained significant knowledge and insight into the dynamics of persecution of religious minorities by religious extremists and totalitarian governments alike.

Rev. Majed El Shafie has organized and led delegations of parliamentarians and religious leaders to address minority rights and humanitarian issues with government leaders in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Cuba, India and Bangladesh. He has testified numerous times before parliamentary bodies including the Subcommittee for International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. He has advocated on behalf of Christians, Falun Gong, Jews, Bahai’s, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and Uyghur Mulsims, to name a few. Also, his work has been the subject of Freedom Fighter, the award winning, feature-length documentary.